LITMIR.BIZ

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freeway about a mile back. This morning she’d caught a ride on the Oregon side of the river because in Washington you couldn’t hitch on the freeway. An older guy picked her up after only a few minutes. He drove a sedan and looked like a businessman. He had a briefcase and a suit hung on a hook covering a window in the backseat. He said he’d drive her all the way to Seattle. For awhile it was fine. They made conversation about the weather and what he did and where he lived, and then he asked her if she liked to party. He asked if she wanted to get it on. After she said no a few times, he pulled over on the shoulder and kicked her out, leaving her in the middle of nowhere in the rain.

      A neon sign flickered above the building’s door – The Habit. A bar. The parked El Dorado made it possible somebody was inside. Maybe she could use the bathroom and dry off, maybe get something to eat. Janie wiped the rain off her face with a damp blue bandana. She shook herself and opened the heavy door.

      From the back a man yelled, “We’re closed.”

      Janie walked toward the voice, her cowboy boots thumping on the threadbare carpeting. “Can I use your bathroom?”

      “I guess,” said the man. “It’s back here.”

      She passed two pool tables near the door, a dartboard, a cigarette machine and stocky wood tables. Captain-chair stools stood around a curved stage. Burgundy curtains hung to the floor. In the mirror behind the wooden bar, she saw herself come into view, wet and bedraggled as a stray dog.

      A fat man with a ponytail stood behind the bar stocking a case of imported beer into a cooler. “Back there.” He jerked his head toward a beaded curtain.

      “Thanks.” Janie took off her pack and set it on the floor. The beads rattled as she stepped through into a narrow hallway. The bathroom door stood open. She washed up and dried off as best as she could with paper towels. Janie was a stickler for hygiene even when it was only powdered soap and paper towels.

      When she came out, the man at the bar was sitting on a stool working a crossword puzzle.

      “ What’s a four-letter word for ‘stop’?”

      “Halt.”

      “Yup. You’re right.” He looked at her for the first time. “Why you so wet? You walking?”

      “Yeah. It’s raining pretty hard out there.”

      “Springtime in Washington.” He chuckled.

      “You got anything I could do around here? I’d trade some work for something to eat.”

      He shook his head. “Nope. Pretty slow until the afternoon when the plant lets out.”

      Janie sighed and stooped to pick up her pack. She didn’t want to go back outside until the rain let up. She’d have to walk for miles to get to a better hitching spot.

      The bartender scratched his chin. “You dance?”

      Janie had heard you could make good money dancing. If she thought about what it meant – to dance around without any clothes on – she wouldn’t be able to do it. She could at least buy a little time. “Sure.”

      “You’re eighteen, right?”

      “Right.” She hoped he wouldn’t look too closely at her fake ID.

      “Go ahead and let’s see you dance then. Dressing room’s next to the bathroom.”

      Janie found a towel in the dressing room and undid her braids, drying her long brown hair as best she could. There were some robes on hooks. She slipped out of her jeans and plaid work shirt, draping them on chairs in front of a wall heater and pulled on a white silky robe. Embroidered blue letters spelled Champ across the breast pocket. She’d had to do some unpleasant things since she left home. No good thinking too much about what she did to get by. She’d make some quick cash and get a Greyhound to someplace – someplace warm and dry, maybe LA. She looked in the dressing room mirror. She walked out and up to the stage, the music started, and she dropped the robe.

      Janie danced. She closed her eyes tight, moved her head from side to side, her damp hair slid across her bare back and shoulders. She knew the fat man behind the bar suspected that she was underage – a runaway – jailbait. Mostly, she figured he just wanted to see her naked.

      Marvin Gaye’s voice spun from the speakers. She listened as she danced. She tried to look like what she imagined an exotic dancer looked like, but because she’d never seen one she was having trouble. She felt awkward and bigger than she was. Not just big. She felt fat. Janie bobbed her head around trying her best to look seductive.

      The man yelled, breaking her attention. “What are you doing with your arms?”

      “What does it look like I’m doing?” Janie stopped dancing and glared at him, hands on her hips.

      “ Well, if it looked like you was dancing I wouldn’t be asking.” He shook his head. “Look, just don’t wave your arms around so much. It looks like you’re playing airplane.” He wiped a glass with a dishtowel and put it on the shelf, then looked back up at her. “Go ahead.”

      She closed her eyes again, trying to imagine dancing in her room back home in Yakima. From her bedroom window she could see the trees in the cemetery. Her mom and dad shared a plot just inside the back entrance where the street deadended. Mama wrapped her car around a tree in Mabton on an icy December morning in 1966, a few months shy of Janie’s sixth birthday. Two years later, her dad met and married Norma, a cashier at the Giant T drugstore. Janie was twelve when her dad had the heart attack, leaving Janie with Norma. Norma hadn’t been so bad at first, but they were never close and when Norma started dating Janie started leaving. She learned to skip school before her thirteenth birthday and began hitchhiking out to the Naches River to avoid going home. The times she was there she hung out in her room. She wore her hair like Janis Joplin’s and learned to swear like her, too. Posters of Jim Morrison hung on the ceiling above her bed. With his leather pants slung low on his hips, he looked down on Janie like the Dark Angel of Sex. She burned sandalwood incense from the only head shop in town to cover the smell of the pot she smoked. She started staying out all night and leaving for days at a time. The last time she’d been home she was fourteen. She’d been gone a week and Norma had already redecorated her room and boxed up all her stuff. When Janie overheard her on the phone talking about turning Janie over to the state, she knew her days were numbered. It made it easier to leave knowing that to Norma she was already gone. It felt more like checking out of a Motel 6 than leaving home. That was two years ago.

      Janie stopped dancing and looked down at the bartender. “Forget it. I can’t do this.” She picked up the bathrobe off the stage floor.

      “I didn’t say you couldn’t dance.”

      She slipped on the robe and stepped off the stage. “Didn’t say I could either.”

      He pulled a cigarette from a pack. “You really eighteen?”

      Janie looked him dead in the face. “Yep.”

      He stared her down. The trick was not to look away.

      “Okay. I’m probably going to be sorry. Oh, what the hell.” He lit his cigarette. “You look like one of them hippie chicks, but you got a nice ass. Tell you what – you got something that says you’re eighteen?”

      Janie nodded yes.

      “You can go on at four and we’ll see how you do. I’m Ernie. Me and my business partner own this bar. You got any problems take it up with one of us.”

      Janie pulled the robe around her. “Thanks.”

      “You ought to meet Stella too. The girls you’ll meet later.” Ernie yelled down the hall. “Hey Stella – you back there?”

      A man appeared from the back of the hall. He was tall and black. His head was shaved and a ruby shined from a pierced ear. He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt, and on his right bicep a tattoo of three stars balanced on a slipper moon.

      Ernie introduced them.

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